Mockingjay

I'LL BE SPOILER FREE BUT WILL DISCUSS THINGS FROM THE FIRST TWO BOOKS AND PLOT POINTS HERE

Well that was rather disappointing. For all the plaudits this series received, other than the first book which despite being derivative, is fast paced and exciting, the remaining two books are so very flawed. 'Mockingjay' is quite a depressing, grubby book and I get the notion that series often grow with their audiences but if that's the case here then the readers of 'The Hunger Games' just grow into misanthropes!

The massive problem of the second book is even worse in this one. Katniss in the first book is an independent, fiery character who makes difficult choices to save others. In the second book she's largely irrelevant to the plot around her and it's even worse in this book. Katniss is either a) moping around in a catatonic state feeling sorry for herself b) unconscious undergoing medical attention whilst everyone else is doing exciting stuff or c) acting as an action movie star, whilst everything else is happening elsewhere. I get that Kat has been traumatised, I get that she has suffered but there is such an imbalance in the series - she's pitched as a symbol of the revolution but other than one act in the first book doesn't intentionally do anything to suggest she is anything special. The Districts hero worship of her is ridiculous in context of the book

So, the basic setup of the book is that the hint about District 13 at the end of Catching Fire is real, but it's a spartan underground district where everyone has enough but food and resources are strictly rationed and there is an absence of any fun. They have nuclear weapons which keeps the Capitol at bay. To cut about 400 pages down to five, they have a civil war, assault the Capitol to kill Snow

Except.... there is a daring rescue in the Capitol rescuing a major character and it all happens off screen whilst Katniss is asleep or something. There is a major civil war which Katniss is a figurehead of, yet bar half a chapter or so it all happens off screen and maybe a bunch of other stuff happens elsewhere until Kat gets near anything interesting

I have to say, the politics in the book FUCKING STINK. It's the most cack-handed treatment of 'extreme politics' with a real shitty subtext which I am sure Americans don't notice, but lap up nonetheless. District 13 is clearly a Soviet Russia with no democracy, everything rationed, extremely militaristic who can't be trusted. They can't have any fun and just prepare for war. There is a little nod that everyone's basic needs are met and people are well fed. On the other hand there is the Capitol which is the United States. It's a cross between a fascist dictatorship and the last days of Rome, where it's populace are generally painted as wealthy, decadent sexual deviants who are probably not heterosexual

Meanwhile there is stupid Kat who just wants to go and hunt stuff

It's politics for fucking idiots, dressed up as Young Adult fiction. 'ohh watch out for the queer blue haired Capitol furries, they'll fuck your kids or something' vs. 'ohh socialism is really bad, everyone eats the same and does things at the same time'. Like there is no nuance or anything, and this is a book about 'freedom' which is just masking another kind of control. The main theme of the book is that Kat slowly realises that 'both sides are as bad as each other' which is a total cop out considering the series. There is a ludicrously unfulfilling ending where Kat is duped / believes one 'evil President' and really takes an action which has no emotional impact and a completely unrealistic ending. This book is ridiculously simplistic and in a lot of ways quite damaging in exploring the 'extremes', when the 'centre' is just as fucked up

One thing I hate about this series is the almost fetishisation of hunting animals. I get it, Kat is a hunter - of people and defenceless creatures. In the first book she is hunting for subsistence because everyone is poor. By the third book she makes a condition of acting as a revolutionary THAT SHE CAN GO OUT HUNTING EVERYDAY, and then every other fucking page Kat is shooting squirrels for giggles. She's a monster really. What makes this worse, is that her lover boy Gale spends a lot of time planning with BeeTee the tech wizard from Book 2 how to design traps which are essentially war crimes and crimes against humanity. There are some moral conundrums about whether these vile things should be deployed against humans, but the whole set up is that these are used all the time by Gale and Katniss for fun torturing and killing animals. At no point does Collins posit the idea that if doing these horrible things to people is morally wrong then why is it okay to do it to animals? I get it, as a vegan living in a carnist world we expect a certain ignorance to animal rights and I don't mind hunting in a book, but hunting animals is such a strong theme in this book it's offensive how neither Kat, not Gale, nor Collins makes the link. It's just speciesist crap

Characters die of course, one got to me, the one that should have got to me was a whole load of blah and led to another Kat period of lying on a gurney. The end of the book also has Kat lying on a gurney somewhere before being deposited somewhere. It leads to another shitty resolution. Reading reviews it's clear a lot of readers are engrossed in the Kat / Gale / Peeta love triangle and who she will end up with. There are a lot of Team Peeta and a lot of Team Gale about and I am sure the boys make a few swoon. I won't spoil the end other than to say it's absolutely stupid and insulting to anyone who invested in Kat as a character. SHE DOESN'T GET TO CHOOSE. She wakes up somewhere, one has exited, pursued by a bear off screen never to be seen again and the other just turns up to make babies with her. Is this the freedom of avoiding the extremes? Independent women having their mate forced upon them. They may as well scream out 'Katniss Everdeen is to stupid to make any decisions about her life'

Honestly, so much of this book sucks

Redeeming features? I did like the defence of the Capitol - it was ridiculously gonzo it felt like a blast reading it and the ingenuity of spending lots of money on Batman traps rather than trusted defences felt like a lot of fun

The rest? The destruction of characters, shitty politics, and the rest of the book was like listening to someone tell you about a good action film they saw somewhere else...